//------------------------------// // One // Story: Transspecieality // by Chatoyance //------------------------------// ═══════════════════════ T R A N S S P E C I E A L I T Y ═══════════════════════ A special PRIDE MONTH true-life novelette By Petal Chatoyance ⚧ ONE My earliest memory of what ponies in our universe represented to me occurred somewhen just prior to entering kindergarten, and I can make no claim to knowing my exact age, but I reason that it must have been near the age of five or so. It would have been about 1965, when the Vietnam War was on every television, magical phoenixes burning troops alive as Walter Cronkite described the carnage, while back in the states the Pony Rights movement was in full swing against the backdrop of the Summer Of Celestia. It was a time of horror and change, and for me, the latter was soon to dominate my life. I was playing in the living room of my mother’s house in Baker Oregon, at 1636 1st street. It must have been a summer, because this was the only time we lived in the house, my father being a cartographer for the USGS. Most summers he left on special mapping excursions, leaving my mother and I in her little house, but this summer he was still with us. I was playing with my many stuffed animals, among them my favorite, Lilly the Leopard, a largish bespotted doll who was my best friend. I had made a little house of blankets and was setting about taking care of my little family in miniature. My father was sitting, possibly reading, behind me. Through the kitchen archway came my mother to announce that ‘Better get to dinner before you turn into a pony!’ and in that frozen moment, something occurred in my young consciousness. My dad was (very) human, as were almost all of the children I was allowed to play with, and my mom was human too, but in that moment it offended me somehow that becoming a pony was somehow a thing to be avoided. As if it were wrong. I knew I did not act like the other human kids did, and that is what bothered me most. Human kids tended to be mean, they hit each other, they shouted, they liked to bang things together and throw them at each other, and a lot of bigger kids were very mean and messed with anyone younger. They were often scary, too. I was not that. I knew that I was far more like my close pegasus friend at the time, Wafty. I was also far more like both of the other ponies I sometimes got to play with when my father was away. My father forbade me to associate at all with Equestrians, but my mom was much more lenient. She helped let me have pony friends when my super-bigoted dad wasn't around. Frankly, I did not like the implication that being a pony was icky. If anything, I knew - very clearly - that I wanted very much to be a pony myself. I told my mother this. I do not exactly remember what occurred after this declaration, but I do know that it frightened and hurt me somehow. Perhaps they were appalled, perhaps my father yelled at me, which would be an expected behavior, as would a spot of hitting me, but whatever it was, it definitely traumatized me. Thus was my earliest conscious knowledge of my species dysphoria revealed to me. Kindergarten afforded my next accessible memory of conflict over my species. Early in the morning, the teacher asked our mixed class to line up, ponies on one side and humans on the other, for some sort of game. I stood with the ponies, of course. When this caused the predictable problem, I threw quite a tantrum, and the teacher, at a loss, had me stand in the Venetian-slatted closet until ‘She said so’. I stood there, crying, seeing the classroom through thin wooden slats, for most of the day. I believe I was only let out at lunchtime. My father Leonard, the mapmaker, had to travel, and thus so did I and my mother. First we lived in apartments, then eventually in a 40 foot long trailer. Throughout my life until high school, I would never call any town home for longer than six months. I had lived in seven different states by the age of seven, and this number would only increase, albeit only on the western half of the US. My father was an ambitious, selfish, brilliant, and utterly despicable man. Of genius level intelligence, he achieved some fame in chess circles as a professional instructor and coach, and was the subject of several newspaper articles because of a stunt he would pull. He was capable of playing twelve simultaneous games of chess, blindfolded, remembering the moves and layout of all the boards at the same time, and calling out moves. Even more amazing is that he generally won nine out of the twelve. While the caliber of my fathers intellect could not be questioned, his ethics and behavior certainly could. My father never had a friend in his life, using mock friendship only so long as it led to career advancement, dumping individuals once he had climbed above them. He was exceedingly violent, and I lost many pairs of glasses to being struck across the room to smash into a wall. He would generally not attack my mother physically, because she had kept her considerable inheritance separate from him, and he coveted it, indeed it was the reason he had married her, a woman fifteen years his senior. The only concern of my father was to make appearances so as to advance, and the watchwords of our family were “Never Let The Neighbors Know”. My mother, Margaret, was kind and doting until near my tenth year of life. At this point something failed in her, and she collapsed into a depressed and weak state, pathetic and useless for almost anything. She was constantly apologizing for having had me very late in life – she had given birth to me at the age of 48 – and felt shame for ‘cursing’ me with an ‘elderly mother’. She hated my father but was utterly dependent on him, and took out her misery by an insidious form of mental torture, applied only to me. Her pleasure was to initiate an emotional conflict with me, over anything she could devise, or failing a constructed reason, nothing at all. Her goal was to fight to a crescendo, then to have me collapse in tears and utter submission, whereupon she would instantly become consoling and loving. One time, probably at age 14, I deliberately withheld this cathartic release, by remaining utterly emotionless, like my hero of the time, Mr. Spock from Star Trek, and observed what would happen. She became increasingly frantic, and for the first time resorted to purely physical threat, brandishing a kitchen knife whilst screaming like someone insane. I was intelligent enough to immediately collapse in terrified bawling and supplication, and, like a light switch she became instantly mellow and terribly, terribly comforting of her little baby. I never dared break the cycle of torture again, having determined to my own satisfaction her reason for doing it. It was a game I never, ever will allow myself to be forced to play again. Unfortunately, young children are the prisoners of their parents. To say that my parents provided no decent human role model for me would be an understatement. But then, to be fair, every human child I played with had their own stories of such abuse - some of them worse. Not one pony kid could even relate, much less share anything even vaguely similar. The worst pony parent stories they could offer were being lectured when they did something wrong. Literally, that was the worst thing that ever happened to them. Of course I envied their lives. Throughout very early grade school, I became first a kind of celebrity, then quickly a pariah, because of my difference. In the first four grades, I was always the first to join a dance, or the first to help the teacher. I was forever inventing games and activities for the other children, like some kind of humanoform Pinkie Pie. It did not hurt that I was considered a Twilight-level child prodigy either, and this all resulted in great, if short lived, popularity for me. The second grade class of Chelan Falls in Washington was so affected by my presence that they sent me an enormous fan package after I had moved away, filled with cards and gifts to say they missed me. It was apparently the class project. I suppose I was excused my flamboyant and pony-like behavior by the mystique of being a prodigy. A second grade child who had memorized the proper names of every bone in both the human and Equestrian bodies, and who knew astronomy - for both universes - at a high school level, could be forgiven almost anything. I was excruciatingly well mannered, and I was exceedingly innocent and pony-like - but, as my mother once put it, it was somewhat expected that a child labeled a genius would act a bit delicate and other-worldly. Being exceptional did not save me for long. By fifth grade onward, I increasingly became the brunt of teasing, exclusion, and violence. Called everything from 'pony-lover' to a literal Changeling, beaten and rejected, I was of course scolded for not fighting back instead of breaking out in song. Being the target of bullies became a standard of my life wherever we moved, and I was fortunate to even have one friend in each new school I attended (almost exclusively a pony!). I lost the open and gregarious nature I had once had, and became a shy, inhibited, and fearful recluse, a trait that remains to this day. One human child, who had made a career of torturing me from my first day, was finally sat down and asked why, in my presence, he had such an obsession with my destruction. He simply was unable to answer. He fumblingly tried to express that there was something about me that made me different, something that made him feel funny when he saw that difference. Something creepily 'pony-like' in my eyes. He hated that feeling, so he had to hurt me. This little session did not stop my persecution, of course, but it did let me have an insight into the reasons for my endangerment. I found that the increasing conflict occurring over my true species versus my species-at-the-time was becoming very painful. How I stood, how I sat, how I spoke and the mannerisms of my expression, all became terrible issues to my parents, my teachers, and very much to other children. Even the fact that I often walked on all fours - I was very limber and practiced this a lot - became a problem, as did my love of Equestrian styled phrases and use of songs. The fake tail I wore constantly was a source of constant insult and reproach. Soon I pranced and sang no more. I feared the constant teasing and embarrassment that resulted from my every action or commentary. I was afraid to laugh lest I be teased for how it sounded, I was fearful of showing appreciation, for it necessitated holding my hands behind me carefully, deliberately, lest I be chastised for attempting to clop them on the floor like hooves instead of clapping like a human. I confined my emotions, and forcibly contained my happy exuberance or my tear filled joys or sadnesses. I became ingrained with absolute terror at the thought of being called a ‘skinhorse’ or a ‘ponyhag’. I was inculcated with narrow attitudes and seemingly infinite self loathing. To be considered a ‘ponyhag’, especially because I knew I was one, was unbearable. It became standard for me to cringe in embarrassment at the merest mention of such terrible words. I was shriveled and blasted by hatred and intolerance. Nothing imaginable could be worse than anyone knowing what I really was. A strange thing occurred to my mind, born of this absolute terror of discovery and self loathing. I was too psychologically broken to face admitting my inner species identity to even myself, and it was a basic impossibility to ignore it. This paradox created a mental division between my inner truth and the outer lie I felt hopelessly forced to perform. My mind split, and I increasingly lived two separate mental states, one aware of my species problem, the other all but ignorant of the reason for it’s endless suffering. I rapidly began to withdraw, and to hide any part of myself that dared be honest about my true species affiliation. I hid even from my day-to-day conscious self, with the pony truth of my identity stepping to awareness less and less. By the age of nine I was exceedingly withdrawn, and much of my natural behavior was controlled and affected, all for the sake of avoiding pain. Still, I hurt inside, and felt forever stifled and trapped. Strange neurotic behaviors began to evidence themselves. I became obsessed with the fear of loss or change. I was distraught for days over the destruction of a little paper unicorn doll I had created to comfort me when my father took away my beloved stuffed toy Equestrians at the age of ten. My father was forever trying to ‘make a human’ out of me, and he felt that needing to sleep with a stuffed pegasus or unicorn was akin to ax murder, at least with regard to me. I cried and raged if even a billboard of my ‘home’ town of Baker was changed during my nine month absences, for that summer sanctuary was the only constant in my life, and the only place I could get away from my father. Getting away from my father was important, for the weakness of my mother was of some slight comfort to me. She had not the heart to enforce my father’s draconian rules. When she and I were alone for the duration of the summer, I might hope to have my stuffed ponies back, or grow my hair (my mane) a little long, or even to wear a brightly colored shirt - perhaps even Pinky-Pie pink. I was allowed to have Equestrian friends, and even have them over to my house. All this, so long as it was ended before we returned to my dread father. As self suppressing as I was, my true self still found ways to come out to me. One way was in an obsession, at the age of 15, with the Disney documentary movie ‘Life Of Fluttershy’. I became absolutely enslaved to the picture, though not to the whole film. What owned me, was the early life of Fluttershy. The little yellow pegasus, unappreciated in Cloudsdale, appeared as completely gentle and compassionate as I wanted to be myself. Fluttershy did not look, or act, like any human. Young Fluttershy was in every way an innocent and vulnerable idealization of my core self, utterly Equestrian, sweet and kind and gentle. She suffered the way I suffered, and I identified strongly with her. I watched the movie, over and over again. I stole money from my mother’s coin jars to pay for admission. I snuck in a tape recorder to tape the sound of the movie so I could listen to it at night, every night. 14 times in a row, twice per day, sometimes thrice, I went to the theatre just blocks from our house in Baker. Exhausted and zombie like, hollow-eyed like some intravenous drug fiend, I stumbled to buy my next admission. Each and every time, I cried continuously through the Young Fluttershy half of the film, before she fell down to the forest and began her life in Ponyville. I sometimes left after that, the rest of the picture offered me nothing. Young, little filly Fluttershy was a perfect reflection of the essence of my soul, a little filly foal trapped under the cruel expectation of being a powerfully-winged weathermare. Delicate, infinitely feminine Fluttershy, who would come to love all the little animals, was my soul on celluloid. Although increasingly repressed, my species issues always seemed to affect every aspect of my life. They especially affected my play. I always preferred the company of other ponies (I thought of myself that way), when circumstances would permit it. The few human kids I played with either became only temporary friends, with whom I spent uneasy hours discussing science fiction or the nature of reality: were ghosts real? Did UFO’s Exist? Was there life after death? What did the arrival of Equestria in the Middle Ages truly mean? Was it true what Celestia had said about Equestrian and human souls mixing and reincarnating between the two collided universes? Sometimes I tried to feel human too, but I always failed. One time, around the age of eight or nine, a neighbor human kid tried to teach me about something he was shocked to find out I had barely heard of, and cared less about: G. I. Joe. I knew enough to know it was icky, but that was it. No, G. I. Joe was really cool, he claimed. I should come see. Or was I a ponyhag? I came to see. I kind of liked the fact that Joe was like a doll, but he was an awfully ugly doll. After all, he only had two legs. He was even disfigured, and had a scar on his flat muzzle! He did have a large wardrobe, like Rarity, but it was all pretty dull, all olive greens and tans. I rather liked the bright silver, space suited 1969 Joe, and his Mercury Capsule, because I loved NASA - but what was with all of these guns? He took me out to play on the sidewalk. Apparently the idea was that we were to use the guns to shoot at each other and use the bayonet like this: UHGH! UHGH! We were enemies and this was the big war. Something in me just curdled. I felt sick. This was really bad. It smelled of evil, of bad things and bad humans and scary stuff. It was like the Vietnam war on the news every night. It was about getting hurt and hurting people. I dropped my Joe-doll like it was poison. I told him in no uncertain terms that I did not want to play with him, or his toys, ever, ever again. This was sick, this was bad. I ran home crying while he called me a skinhorse, a Celestia-puppet and a ponyhag. Of course my father would not let me have any of the toys I really wanted. I never wanted humanoid Barbie dolls, because they seemed so hard and weird looking. I liked soft, cute, Equestrian dolls. I wished I could have my stuffed ponies back. I used a magic marker on my feather pillow - I have it to this day - and drew big Equestrian eyes and a happy muzzle on it. Under the cover, no one could tell, but I knew. Now my pillow was ‘Pony Pillow’ and he was my friend. I held Pony-Pillow tight against my body, while I slept. I always slept with my leg over Pony-Pillow, holding him enfolded in my four limbs as if they were all legs, surrounding a herdmate. I sleep that way to this day. One time my mother took pity on me and made me a little sock-based stuffed Equestrian - as long as I kept it hidden. It had ping pong eyes and looked like a cucumber with four stringy legs, covered with yarn hair. The tail and mane were made of ribbons. It was objectively terrible, but I loved it anyway. Sadly, my dad found out and destroyed it while I watched. This was supposed to help make a real human out of me. I was desperate for pony toys, but I became far too frightened to even ask anymore. One toy, though, was just too much. Mattel released something wonderful called “Upsey Ponesey”. The “Ponydiculous World Of The Upsey Ponesies” was all of my little filly dreams come true. There were a multitude of individual play sets, each complete with a cardboard play mat, various items like little pink bridges and bright purple flowers, and adorable, almost anime styled, fluffy headed Equestrian dolls and their pets. The little soft, rubbery dolls were very well made, with bright colorful muzzles and bendable legs so as to fit into their little outfits, hoofshoes and magical airships. They came with names like Cloudy Days and Spiralhorn, and they even had a mythology! The world of the Upsey Ponesies was a planet of dandelion puffs. The great Huff, a godlike wind, came and sneezed on the world, blowing all of the dandelions into the sky. The puffs fell back. The ones that fell through a rainbow, became the Ponesies, little Equestrian-styled cuties with rainbow colored manes. The puffs that fell through a storm cloud became the Changelies, and trotted on legs with swiss-cheese hollows, and were hungry for love all the time. Everybody loved everybody in the land of Upsie Ponesey, and all of the little playsets could be joined together to form one huge world, arranged anyway you desired, providing there was enough floor space. This was too much for my little inner-filly self to help. I could not bear to openly use my allowance to buy my first set myself. On a trip to the stores with a pony friend, I begged and pleaded for the pegasus friend I played with to buy it for me, while I hid in my mother’s car. I cringed down in the back seat so no one could see me. My heart pounded. My mom did not want me to have it in the first place - what would my father say? But I was absolutely obsessed, and when I become obsessed, nothing stands in my way long. I was so embarrassed. I was terrified that someone might notice that it was I who had asked for my friend to go into the store to buy my playset. I was sure everyone in the parking lot knew that I wanted a pony toy. I could barely breath from nervousness and excitement. My mother and my little pegasus friend came back, without the toy. She thought I was being really weird, why couldn’t I just go buy the toy, I had the money. My mother was upset that I even wanted it, especially this bad. It was a toy made for ponies, not humans. She insisted that if I were going to buy such a toy that I had to face doing it myself, maybe it would teach me a lesson. Ready to go? NO! I would have that toy! It was too pretty, too beautiful! I had to have Cloudy Day! She was yellow and had a diamond dog friend and a little green fence and everything! O.K. Then! But get it over with dammit! I slunk, mortally embarrassed but determined, behind my confused friend and my upset mother. My neck bent 90 degrees, I saw my own feet and nothing else, save for the furtive peek. I faced Cloudy. Cloudy Day faced me. I could not bear to hold such pony wonder in public. Please, I begged my friend, please buy it for me. Even she was annoyed now and grabbed my treasure and clomped to the counter. She plunked the money that I had given her down and Cloudy Day was in a bag. My mother looked strangely disturbed. Out we tromped. I stared at my all-too-human feet. At the car, I could not wait to hold my bag. Here! Sweet Celestia, have it already! I sat in the back and stared at the glory in my hands. It was mine, really mine. I was too happy to be embarrassed for awhile. For Christmas, all I wanted was the Deluxe Upsie Ponesey Worlds-O-Fun Set. No way was my father going to permit that. For months I pleaded, I begged, I drew pictures of it and made up songs about it. I cried, I mourned, I fussed, I sank into almost immobile depressions. My mother could not bear my suffering. She worked on my father. It was only a phase, I would outgrow it. There were other human children that had them! Of course, all my playmates at that time were Equestrian. I did get the set. I have it to this day. I had to keep it hidden, of course. It even had a storybook with the mythology in it. It is my most treasured toy from my childhood. There were a few times that I told, or came close to telling, others about the nature of my plight. Once, in Victorville California, at the age of ten, I had two playmates, Jodi and Cheryl, who were my best friends at the time. I had created “The Rinky Dink Club” for us to be a part of, and we played together every day. One fine afternoon, Jodi admitted to me that she wished she had been born a stallion. My heart sang! A kindred spirit! I excitedly told her of my own wish to be a filly, perhaps a little too overwhelmingly. The topic was never to be discussed again, it seemed to frighten her. Even so, we all continued to play together, three ponies in behavior, if not form. Several times I tried to tell my mother, when we were left by ourselves to the house in Baker - my father gone on some surveying trip - but the histrionics she replied with forced me to repeatedly deny the admission as a poor joke - which strangely calmed her immediately, instantly, as though the incident had never happened. I think she saw what I was inside, in some manner, but desperately needed to deny what she sensed. I developed ulcers around the age of twelve, and this led to many visits with doctors. My stomach problems were rather painful, and the doctors were very concerned. Finally a doctor sat me down to ask me what stresses I might be enduring, for it was the wisdom of the time that ulcers were caused by extreme stress and not Heliobacter Pylori. I sat there looking up into the eyes of my doctor, alone in a room, and knew that telling a doctor might save me. I knew that there might, just might, be something that could be done, for I had great faith in science and medicine, and rumors of a working ponification procedure were just starting. I might actually be able be a pony! But I thought of my parents. I thought of what my violent, dangerous father might do. I thought of the screaming fights every other night, I remembered how much my ‘nonhuman’ behavior caused me to be punished by my parents. I thought of being abandoned. I began to become terrified. I told my doctor about the attacks and the incessant bullies, but I could not bring myself to tell him the real reason for my misery. The most disturbing time that I ever told anyone prior to my transition was around the age of 17. For a brief week, I somehow became conscious of my suppressed identity. I remembered my life, always a dim fog to me otherwise, and understood what I was, what I should be. The terrible split in my mind had mostly healed. I am not sure what precipitated this event, but I believe that it was a brief television bit about transspecieality, featuring one of the first successful transequines, the famous Lauren Faust who became Fyre Flye. Armed with the awareness of what I knew I was, and with the suggestion that there actually was something that might be done about it, I needed someone to talk about it to. Please understand that I had lived a very isolated life, moving all the time, and always under the control of my parents. I was very unaware of the world, and my life experience was muddled by my split mind and far too much television. I was far too innocent, and ridiculously trusting. Which is why, I suppose, I decided to turn to my art teacher at the time. That summer, once again in Baker, I had enrolled for the second year in an art class run by a nun in a nearby Catholic church. I had no real understanding of any religion, it simply was not an issue to my family. Sister Mary Elizabeth was such a friendly person, so kind and sweet, and I was her very favorite student. She seemed to think the world of me, and even arranged my very first art show. I really liked her. I wished I could be like her, because she seemed almost Equestrian. I came one afternoon and asked to talk with my friend and teacher, about something private and serious. I reasoned that of all people, someone filled with the joy of god and art, would be able to counsel me in a kindly and open way. I happily told her that I finally knew what had made me depressed my entire life, that I was really an Equestrian filly and not a human at all, that I was overjoyed to finally understand that. I asked for her help. In chemistry, I was once amazed to learn about a phenomena called sublimation. There are circumstances where a solid can become a gas, directly, without melting to become a liquid first. The solid just instantaneously becomes another thing, without going through any gradual transformation. Sister Mary Elizabeth underwent personality sublimation. One second she was beatitude and God’s eternal love, the next instant in time, she was Satan incarnate. Her express advice was very straightforward. I was utterly consumed by evil, and was inherently a creature of Satan. However, she felt that I must have some slight degree of goodness left in me, and so I should follow her advice. I should quietly commit suicide instead of undergoing a species change. This would prevent my very existence from acting as a corrupting spiritual influence that would certainly condemn innocent human children yet unborn to hell. If I had any love or goodness in me at all, I would leave immediately and kill myself. Of course, she offered, I would burn in hell forever, but at least I would have made one noble sacrifice to protect future generations. God would have no mercy for one such as I, but at least it would be the right thing to do. I fled in tears, shock, and stunned horror. The split in my mind came back in days, this time far, far more strongly.